Flipper
You are so right about being at the meetings and it putting you right back into the trance. Even now when I hear certain words or if I am around very strong cult minded JW's I will feel just really down on myself and instantly get depressed, sometimes it takes me days to get out of a depresson just from taking with a stong minded JW. It all sort of makes sense now.
BotR
I remember when I was a kid having to go to the meetings they were so painfully boring to me. I tried to follow along but so much of it was over my head. I clearly remember the talks on sex being bad, yet we were so much better then the Catholic Church because we knew that sex was not the original sin like they taught. When you are five years old that is really hard to make sense of and what is oral and anal sex anyway.
Or the speakers always saying 'brothers do you understand the meaning of this', or 'brothers do you want to be in the new system.' Well what about us sisters? I used to get so upset because some of the elders never said the word sisters. A few did but most just used the word brothers. I remember one time when I was about five or six I asked my mom well are there going to be any women in the new system. She was irritated with me and said why would I ask such a stupid question. I said well most of the talks only talk about brothers. She said when they say that they mean everyone including girls when they use the word "brothers" it was just easier to use only one word. I thought that was just stupid and lazy of the speaker, really they need to save time and not say 'brothers and sisters.' It truly upset me as a small kid, crazy now thinking back how a child's mind works.
But there was so much as a kid that disturbed me at the meetings. Like in the back of one of the books there is this beautiful woman holding a baby and the seven headed dragon is looking to take the baby away from her. (I was told to devour it.) I just could not grasp what they were meaning. I just wanted to take the baby and run. Now I know that the beautiful woman was supposed to be Jehovah's organization and the seven headed dragon was Satan but to a kid it was just disturbing.
So what I used to do was stair at the wallpaper in the KH. It had weird patterns on it and I would make some of them into cars with head lights on and other parts of the wall paper were city's with people in them. I would make up people who lived in the wall paper, etc. Man thinking back to that time no wonder the religion affected me so horribly as an adult, as it screwed me up so bad as a kid.
There was no one explain any of the meetings to me and I was just supposed to get it from listening. We never had a family study, I was never allowed to question anything because it was the truth and that was all I needed to know. If it is the truth then it is true! Right? So when I asked a question I was shut down right away and made to feel stupid.
It was all hypnotic and spellbinding. When I was zoning out in my wallpaper world I was still listening taking it all in one part of my brain that was telling me this is the truth.
What a way to miss with children's minds.
LITS